Keeping crickets

Buying crickets from Petco is fast and easy but can get expensive. Ordering crickets online is a much more reasonable way to get crickets, but I've never have luck keeping them around very long. If anyone has kept them for more than a few days without the crickets turning into a heap of dead stinky insects, please post how you do it.

Hi Lucille..that's the million dollar question,well for adult crix anyway.Are you having trouble with all sizes or specifically large ones? I have no trouble unless they are 3 quarters or larger.I use a large plastic tote to dump them along with egg-crating for them to hide[ it comes with the shipments]I feed them any veggies that I do the beardies.Just check daily for anything looking moldy.The babies all up to 3/4"do fine,I keep them for weeks.The large ones are the ones that die off but usually takes a week or two.When you set THEM up,put a layer of oatmeal on bottom of toter[ I learned that tip from Gina Gauvin] Sometimes they might die b/c of temp extremes during shipment+ just takes a few days to actually kill them.Hope this helps you....

Thanks for the advice, I'll try it. I have been buying petco crickets for a while but New York Worms is running a special on crix over on KS. I've bought from them before and they are really good, crix always arrived hopping. I think maybe I always ordered the big ones, this time I'm trying the half inch size.
How high are your tote sides?

Get Flukers Orange.

I keep them with this, and they live for quite a long time ( long enough that i use just about all of them up before they die) Not all live, but im going to say 80% of them do.

I had to go look it up, lol. Looks like good stuff, hope it is at Petco.

In a moment of insanity, I even thought about breeding crix myself, but fortunately reality interfered and I'm going to try to get the cricket shipments from New York Worms to last at least 3 weeks. Once I finish the living room painting which is majorly interfering with my time to do critter stuff, I have a project involving making some acrylic cube housing for slings, and my fuzzies seem to like crix better than mealworms.

We order from NY Worms(3/4" size) as well and have had very good luck. We do the exact same thing as angie.h except the oatmeal. We keep ours in a rubbermaid-like bin, we cut a piece out of the top and hot glued screen in it's place. It helps with ventilation which helps keep the smell down for about 2 weeks. Then we start to smell it but that's about when we run out again, then we bleach out the tub and let it dry for the next batch. We do the gut load gel chunk type of stuff, we switched kinds now & I think it's Flukers. Also we feed greens & veggies to them.

What size bins do y'all use?

The totes I use are about 16"high+ about 20 gal.for very small crix. I dump up to 6-7,000 in one tote.The larger crix go in the next size up....every store has lots of different sizes.I give the larger crix more room.We have had the melodious sounds of crickets chirping in our house for the last 16 years...our 2 cats used to catch any escapees but now they're old and they can't be bothered.Not many escape though,even though we don't use the lids and we never see them upstairs.

Ours is probably about 20-30gal and we only keep 1000-2000 @ a time of the 3/4".

The best tote I have found is the 66 quart Sterilite. It's sides are smooth and the bottom is also with the exception of the outer perimeter. Depending on the size of crickets, it will determine if you need the lid or not. 3/4's to Adult will need the lid to keep them from jumping out. I cut out the majority of the lid and replaced (hot glue is your friend, unless you touch it) it with aluminum screen.

Place the egg crate on one side and the food and water source on the other. Depending on the amount of crickets you will be keeping at a time you will have to do this more often with larger quantities. Remove everything from the tote (except the crickets) and tip the tote to one side. Place the egg crate back on the clean side and the crickets will return to the egg crate. A little prompting with a business card (those plastic ones I keep getting for a pre-approved American Express card work great) while scooping the waste, sheds and dead ones will leave you with a clean tote. Do this every couple days. If they are smelling you need to do it more often. Crickets do not do well when wet and the dead crickets will start to cause too much moisture if not removed. Too much moisture and you have more dying.

The problem with crickets coming from most pet stores is they do not know how to care for them let alone feed them. Potato is not, I repeat NOT a food source. By the time you get them they are half or more starved and chances are is the reason they die off quickly. Chirpers generally have on an average a 14 day life cycle. The problem is you don't know how long they have been chirping prior to you getting them.

Food: If your food (crickets) are healthy your critters will be healthy. I have made up my own special blend of cricket/roach food but I have and deal with a lot of them at once. It is a combination of a number of things including (but not limited to) kitten food, oatmeal and calcium. I grind it all up in the blender and it becomes the consistency of brown sugar. Flaked fish food is a good food source too and if you already have fish it is one less thing to worry about.

Water: I prefer to use carrot over potato or the gel stuff. Do not mist them. They also sell a watering device that is similar they use for chicks but it has a sponge or plastic ring with holes that keeps the crickets from drowning. Open dishes will not work as crickets do not swim well and you'll just end up with some nasty soup.